The Evidence

I was so excited to see this show since I like both Rob Estes & Orlando Jones. The first time I watched the show I was sucked into the way you get to see all the evidence and how it's pieced together by the inspectors. I also enjoy seeing Martin Landau's character on screen. He always manages to provide a little humor as well as history lesson. The only concern I have is that this great show will end up alongside "Firefly" at the end of it's first season.If you enjoy two hot guys who can also act with interesting back stories - Rob's character has a wife who was murdered, the case is still open and he can't get answers through the station; Orlando is trying to help his ex-gang banger brother get a fresh start after jail - then this is THE show for you.

Briefly, this show incorporates the best aspects of some of the old favorites: the style of Miami Vice, the dialog of, I don't know, a great buddy cop show with a serious edge, .... Also, it appears that while every episode will have a solved murder, ala CSI, there is also a through line with the main character, Sean Cole, ala Lost, where the audience will undoubtedly tune in to see what will happen with the memories of his dead wife--perhaps he will even begin to solve the case little by little. This subplot was the most intriguing part of the show for me. In fact, I watched the first episode with about 8 friends, and the thing we kept talking about most was the dead wife subplot.

One question... wait two. Does every woman on the show, regardless of her job (from the cops to the lab dorks) have to be a model? And is this why every character on the show seems to have some sort of sexual tension with every other character on the show--even Martin Landau?

A great replacement for Invasion.

The Evidence One Hour Crime Drama Premiered 9pm Wednesday, March 22, 2006 on ABC *

"Not since NCIS has their been a more idiotic rip off of CSI" "CSI: San Francisco is the weakest of the CSI's this is a CSI isn't it?"

That's what I have to say in a nutshell about The Evidence.

The only thing that intrigues me about this new crime drama is that it's not on CBS like all the other who-done-it crime dramas on television these days (except for NBC's Law and Order).

Orlando Jones (Make 7 up yours) and Rob Estes (Gilmore Girls) star as crime fighting buddies in The Evidence, a crime drama that brags of only one original idea: present the evidence at the beginning of the show. Sounds potentially interesting right? Sure, but try as they may, The Evidence is all they have.

The first downer I noticed about this show was that the cinematography was out of whack in an NCIS kind of way- jump cuts from one side of a person's face to the other, very distracting and very un amusing for the eye. The other bad thing I noticed, and this is a big bad thing, they copied CSI (and all its many clones) right now to the fuzzy flash backs and helicopter establishing shots. OK?

To make things worse, the dialog is awful, the acting stale and uncomfortable; Jones is still breathing his 7 up days and it's hard to ignore. Estes does little better, his incompetent, sober character (I lost my wife to a killer I can't find) is clinched and played by an actor who should be kicking Jones's ass by now. Where is the feeling? No one grits their teeth or cares about this dead girl's killer. The realism is not there!

Original, die hard CSI watchers know what a good crime show looks and feels like, and will probably be unamused by this ABC wannabe and go back to their CBS chalk lineup. My prediction is that this show will be about as successful as the remake of Dragnet starring Ed O'Neil and Ethan Embry. However, NCIS is still on the air, and The Evidence is just as idiotic so you never know what America will sucker into.

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The evidence is a really great cop show. I enjoy Rob Estes and Orlando Jones as partners, they act like husband and wife sometimes. Other than that, I look forward to another season. I remember Rob Estes as a cop on another series called silk stalkings. He made a great cop in that series as well. I think that who ever picked the cast for the series the evidence did a really great job. I couldn't think of any other partners to put together other than Rob Estes and Orlando Jones. I hope that the series last for a while, that way I would have a really good cop show to watch. The first four episodes were really good and I look forward to the next one.

Network: ABC; Genre: Crime & Mystery, Drama; Content Rating: TV-14 (language, violence, adult content and some gore); Perspective: Contemporary (star range: 1 - 4);

Seasons Reviewed: Series (1 season)

ABC was advertising "The Evidence" - for months before the few weeks it was actually on - as a ground-breaking new twist on the crime drama. That twist is based on a gimmick where the show gives us the items in evidence - including the deceased's body - laid out on a table and described to us by Martin Landau in the beginning of the show, then lets us see the murder and how all these items come into place as detectives Bishop (Orlando Jones) and Cole (Rob Estes) attempt to solve the case.

The show is potentially unique in that if you don't switch over to it in the first 60 seconds you will be missing out on all the fun. The episodes vary in how cleverly the show uses this gimmick, but the best ones - and the Pilot is the best one - reveal that the true meaning behind the item is not what we'd expect. A cell phone number may not be a cell phone number at all. In that Pilot we see a severed finger with a ring on it as a piece of evidence, and then sweat it out while the ring changes hands wondering who the inevitable will finally happen too.

However, for the rest of the series, after the show's first few minutes it pretty much goes on auto-pilot. The prospect of being able to follow the evidence through the show falls apart with what could either be network or series director tampering that assumes that the audience is stupid or unable to tune in at the beginning of a series. Because we don't have a memory after all, the slightest mention of a piece of evidence triggers a flashback of it on the table for us. Once again, just as it marred the truly original "Tru Calling", the network's desire to pander to the stupidest audience member out there by serving us every detail on a silver platter with incessant flashbacks, prevents us of any joy of putting the pieces of the mystery together ourselves.

Given that the networks apparently think there are a lot of armchair detectives out there, why would they rob us of that little pleasure? And given that that gimmick is the only thing that makes "Evidence" stand out, what is the point of even seeing it at the beginning in the first place? Unlike "CSI" where "the evidence speaks for those who can't", "The Evidence's" use of evidence becomes increasingly pointless to the story.

As the procedural/crime portion of the show goes, well, that part isn't bad. "The Evidence" is a little bit sharper than the "Law & Order" franchise. Hell, it is a lot sharper than the inexplicable cable hit "The Closer". Personable performances and solid buddy chemistry between Jones and Estes give the show more personality than we're used to from a network crime series. Estes' Cole is obsessed with solving the murder of his wife several years ago - a storyline used to bookend most episodes. Jones does something of a half-star turn here. While he does still slink in and out of his wacky comic mode, we are seeing an Orlando Jones that is miles away from 7-Up ads and "wacky black guy sidekick" movie roles and is now a much more mature as an actor than he's ever been given credit for. I'm impressed.

But despite what a joy it can be to watch the two leads go back and forth, "The Evidence" never gets beyond a broken gimmick or build itself up to that next level as a stand-out entry in the already saturated crime drama genre, quickly running out of steam before the end of its already short run.

* * ½ / 4